ben brantley’s blog

Folks, winter is on the way. Just two weeks ago, we were all sitting around in our un-air-conditioned house about to melt. The heat was ever-present, reaching 90 at our abode during midday. Bringing a newf into worst possible thermal environment at that time was doubly challenging, since she needed to

a) go out and do her business a lot
b) sit in water all the time
c) have a cooler place than the main floor for her crate

There were a couple days where I took to hiding in the basement (where it is, bar none, always cool) with the dogs and hoping that there wouldn’t be an accident.

Today, however, we have swung fully the other direction, and the mountains have demonstrated their orographic prowess. The temperature today, at 1pm? 42F. Right now? 37F. We had at least two hailstorms today, and the rest of the time was a “wintry mix” of rain and icy slush. The slush that accumulated on our front porch at around lunchtime is, for the most part, still there!

Needless to say, Zamba is in heaven. She can lie on our bed without moving around constantly. She found the slushy ice after a couple of hints and now insists upon pouncing on it at every visit to the “potty.” (Alas, today there have been quite a lot of potty visitation attempts with somewhat underwhelming production ratios.)

Sounds like something from Lost, huh?

It’s been 13 days since we got Zamba.

She’s now 14 weeks old.

She weighs 45 pounds tonight, up from 38 upon arrival. (She’s within an inch of Chaco’s height at this point.)

Today we arranged a “play date” with three other newf puppies, including the runt of Zamba’s litter (li’l sis), a puppy from a one-dog litter (the others all died at birth due to a complication), and a landseer (black and white spotted Newf variant). Somewhat interestingly, if not surprisingly, Zamba and her li’l sis played the most of any of the six possible puppy pairings.

Oh, and the zero? That’s my goal for the number of “accidents” inside the house. We’ve got a ways to go on that one.

In addition to having an infatuation for water, our new puppy is also blessed with a very special brain. You see, it has a built in “lag factor.” She needn’t be under the influence of mind-altering chemicals (I suppose water will do). There don’t have to be any distractors in the environment.

No, Zamba simply needs time to process. She’s not dumb, persay — she’s learned or partly learned several handy commands in a matter of days. But, stare right her and give her a confident “sit” and you’ll immediately get a Newfie Tongue Hanging Out(TM), a Newfie Blank Stare(TM), a faintly audible whirring (that’s the gears in her brain), and then, finally… yes. She’ll sit.

Okay, I probably got a little hyperbolic with that description. Really, the lag averages only about five seconds. It’s awesome!

Zamba is a consummate water lover! She likes it any way she can get it: drinking, slobbering, falling from the sky, or in her swimming pool. The first thing she did when she got home and found the water bowl, after taking thirty enormous gulps, was to stick her feet in the bowl and chill. Now she’s to the point where, unless it’s super cool like this evening, she’ll just go to the bowl and dig out a half gallon of water onto the floor. Then she lays in the puddle and falls asleep.

Kathy got her a shallow kiddie pool on day one and filled it with about three inches of water, but a heavy series of rains came and topped it off to the full 5 or 6 inches. She tried to “sleep” in the pool, but it was too slippery for her and she’s not tall enough to keep her head out of that much water while lying down.

She discovered in under 48 hours that the tops of my stacked-two-high pails of aquarium salt, standing out on the front porch, have indentations that gather small amounts of (dirty) water. Witness:

It’s been a pain to try to keep her tummy dry, and the wise Newf Masters on the forums say that it may be a futile struggle in the summertime. Apparently, 80F is about the warmest weather they can stand… and we’ve had quite the summertime conditions here in the last week, regularly reaching into the high 80’s. In this un-air-conditioned house, that makes for some toasty conditions! Needless to say, even more trips to the river and the lake are most certainly in order.

That’s Zamba to you.

Several months ago we began our search for a Newfoundland (a.k.a. “newfie” or “newf”) puppy. Several breeders, stillborn litters, and heart murmurs later, we found our Zamba:

She’s been with us at home for six days now, having spent a nice, long 11 weeks with her litter before making her way up to Nederland from the Colorado plains. Needless to say, this must be what having a kid feels like: short bursts of sleep interrupted by whining and carting puppy up to try to use the bathroom in the frigid night air. (Okay, it wasn’t frigid.) Howling and yowling when the “baby” is separated from the family for more than 60 seconds in her crate. Peeing and pooping on the hardwood floor. A trip to the vet every other day.

It’s been fun!

As you can tell, Zamba is a thirsty dog. She drinks constantly. She also prefers to stay wet, because it is “hot” here. While she’s at it (wet), she might as well roll in the mud, too. Zamba weighs about 30 pounds and will grow anywhere from 2 to 5 more pounds each week between now and probably November. She does plenty of eating to go along with that drinking.

Zamba does a good job of following her Pack around, including Chaco. (He, on the other hand, is not quite sure what he thinks just yet. You can pretty much tell there is a mixture of interest and disdain in Aussie brain when he keeps an eye on her around the house. At the river, he is, however, all business — solely sticks, roots, and stones for him.)

Today I took Zamba to the Miners’ Day parade in town. This was a fantastic chance to give her exposure to all manner of people, sights, and sounds. We saw old people, young people, big people, little people, crying babies, fire engines and sirens, bicycles, skateboards, little yapping dogs, big dogs, puppies, and even a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie someone left on the trail. It took about two hours to wander down First Street, to the lake, and back, but it was worth it!

Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Windsor Locks. In truth, it’s a small suburb of Hartford. The airport suburb. Bleh. I’m sitting in Friendly’s, a northeast U.S. chain joint apparently renowned for poor service. (I asked Kathy about it and got a comment circa 1990: “well, all I remember is that it took forever to get your food. The chicken nuggets were okay.” I asked TripAdvisor about it, one review circa 2008: “1 star. Worst service ever.”)

The good news is that I only had to walk three blocks in the rain, and the bowling alley next door has a $1.99-a-game-until-closing special starting in 3 minutes. The bad news is that my milkshake is not well-blended and served in a hot glass, my wrist is not strong enough to bowl anymore, and I’m stuck in Windsor Lakes because of weather delays in Hartford, Washington (my connection), and Denver. I decided to bail before the hotels sold out and just take the 5:30am flight tomorrow morning.

Before I bailed, I was presented with a classic dilemma: I got to the airport at 4:30pm. My flight, the last one of the night, was scheduled 7:33pm, through Dulles, to land in Denver at 11:30pm Mountain Time. (That’s 1:30am my body-clock time.) At 5:30pm there was a flight out of Hartford to Chicago. In theory, then, I could switch to that flight and go home “early.” The catches?

First, the connecting flight O’Hare to Denver was overbooked by 47 seats in economy. Now, this is one of the rare 777’s from ORD to DEN (a repositioning flight, for sure), which means it is huge and has both business and first class. It is the best United plane to fly on domestically, because a single upgrade yields you a nice, nearly-lie-flat seat that is totally sleepable. And, though economy was overbooked by 47 (out of 190-something), business was only booked 15 out of 40. This means that United will probably (a) see a bunch of people misconnect and miss the flight in the first place, (b) upgrade 25 people to business class, and (c) bump any leftovers with the offer of a free ticket. Unfortunately, even though I was booked in an upgraded (first) class on my return flights home, when you standby on another flight, you have to clear economy first and then you can standby to upgrade. This means I had basically no chance to get on the plane, even though there were a bunch of seats available in classes of service that I would be willing to upgrade to get.

Still with me? The second catch is that there were two more ORD to DEN flights that evening, both of which were overbooked by about 10. Sometimes I can standby on such a flight and still make it, because my airline “status” moves me to the top of the list in most cases. However, there was also weather moving into ORD, and ORD is always a nightmare even when the weather is not bad. And, getting stuck in ORD is the worst place on the United route map.

Third catch: the last two flights ORD to DEN actually both got in later than my original 11:30pm arrival. Now, why would I bother changing my route and standing by on flights (and enduring ORD) just to get home later?

Final catch: the presumed downside to sitting around in the Hartford airport is that I would be, well, sitting around in the Hartford airport. What I didn’t know, until the nice lady at the ticket counter told me, is that there’s a Sheraton hotel hooked to it. Said Sheraton has a very nice pool, gym, and locker/shower area that I discovered I could take advantage of. So, I decided to stick with my original routing, get a run/swim in, and dine at the Sheraton restaurant before casually walking over to clear security and board my flight.

What I didn’t count on (or bother to check, for that matter) was the weather that moved into both Washington and Hartford during my 2.5 hours of chilling at BDL. By the time I bailed for a luxury Windsor Lakes hotel (courtesy United, since I fly so much), we were 15 minutes late and the plane to take us to Washington hadn’t left Washington yet. I didn’t even want to look at what the Washington flights were doing.

Turns out I probably would have “won” this time had I gambled with O’Hare. Oh well. Bowling alleys are kind of fun when you’re the only one there. Maybe I’ll give it a, er, roll.